“I’m telling you, just go out with me,” Mira pleads for what has to be the tenth time as I head up the stairs. “It’d make everything so much easier!”

“Goodnight, Mira,” I reply, a tired sigh escaping my lungs as I make my way to my room.

Our planning of Operation: Fake Girlfriend went no better at the dorm than it did at lunch. While I did a bit of research into how to competently fake an online presence in the hopes of fooling anyone digging into my pretend partner’s background, the reality is that such a plan was entirely unfeasible from the get go. Neither of us were hackers by any stretch of the imagination, and any photos we'd upload to corroborate the story would have timestamps that we couldn't alter. Mira, at first at least, certainly did her best to help, but my constant unfamiliarity with this world’s social media, despite having a registered profile on most of them, only served to baffle Mira in the few times I had to ask for her assistance. It was only a matter of time before she started asking questions that I couldn’t answer, and given her insatiable need to dig into my background, I’d rather simply sidestep dealing with that whole situation altogether.

Which led us back to the idea of finding me an accomplice; someone who I could fake date, who would be willing to keep up the charade. Mira, of course, was more than happy to volunteer for the position. Repeatedly. And not in a particularly romantic or endearing way, either. After only half an hour of dealing with her constant needling, I simply had to leave my new feathered friend to preserve my own sanity.

I end up doing a bit of sketching, not that it's particularly comfortable without the drafting table my mom ordered, then blow off some steam in another one of the unfamiliar games in my computer’s library. If I've got nothing else to look forward to at the end of the day, I can at the least appreciate the fact that whatever Jason existed in this reality before me at least had decent taste in games.

By the end of the evening, I find myself back in bed with no more progress towards an actual plan of action than I had at lunch. My mind full of half formed deceptions and roiling uncertainty, I eventually drift off into the thankfully blissful oblivion of sleep.

I open my eyes. I’m there, back in my old high school, standing at the center of the quad. I look all around me, quickly realizing the center of the quad has been lowered into some sort of pit . Above me, surrounding the pit, are all of my classmates, the girls gawking at me from behind a thick sheet of glass. With a sudden realization, I know what this pit is.

It's a zoo enclosure. And I'm the exhibit.

I run to the wall, trying to scrabble up the sheer surface of dirt and rock, but my hands find no purchase. I spin around in fear as a voice calls out from somewhere, “Feeding time!”

A massive white and brown bird, with wings dozens of feet across, lands from out of the sky into the enclosure with me. I look out at the crowd, pleading for someone to help me, but nobody in the faceless mass responds to my cries. With dawning horror, I realize why. They're all here to see a show. They're all here to see a feeding.

I look up at the terrible creature as its massive serrated beak opens.

It almost seems to be smiling. Its face is Lilly’s face. 

The beast calls out my name. Its voice is Mira’s voice. 

That terrible maw dives down at me, the force of the blow sending chunks of earth flying everywhere.

And then, everything goes black.

I suddenly come back to consciousness, shaking a little, covered in cold sweat. I look around, and sure enough, I'm lying in bed in my new room. I can see the subtle glow of a streetlamp outside , as well as the red light from my laptop's charge cable. It's okay, I tell myself. I'm safe. A nightmare. It was just a nightmare.

I lay there for a moment, trying my damnedest to calm down my racing heart. I am just about get myself under control, before a sudden alarm from my phone startles me again, my body jerking autonomously at the noise. I grab the thing and hit the button to silence it, seeing that it's my normal morning wake up alarm.

Jeez. What a fucking way to wake up.

After that, my morning routine proceeds much as it did yesterday. After getting dressed, much like the day before, I don’t really feel like I have it in me to cook breakfast, despite having plenty of time. I make my way downstairs as I decide I’ll just duck into the kitchen to see if we have anything ready to eat. Maybe a simple cereal, or an oatmeal I can pop in the microwave. Unfortunately for me as I make my way past the second floor I can hear someone moving around downstairs. I stop, briefly debating whether or not to hide up in my room for another few minutes, hoping that whichever dorm-mate was down there would be gone by then, but eventually decide to bite the bullet and just push past them if need be.

“Oh, good morning Jason!” Ms. Kaprowski greets me as I enter the lobby, her face beaming. She’s wearing what I can only describe as someone’s attempt to make a rug from the 70’s into a dress. It’s not particularly flattering, but I have to admit it has a sort of “eccentric librarian” charm to it.

“Good morning!” I greet her back, surprising myself with how genuinely happy I am to see her.

“I was beginning to think you were going to stay hidden in that room of yours all week!” she says with a tinkling laugh, assuring me that it’s just good natured ribbing.

I wince a little regardless. “Sorry I missed the pizza party on Monday. I was just out with some friends I made.”

“Oh, really?" she asks, an expression of mock shock on her face. "Look at you! Not even a day in your new school and you already found some new friends! It’s just like I told your mother when we first met, a handsome boy like you’d have no trouble adjusting to the new school at all.”

Oh, Ms. Kaprowski, if you only knew.

“It’s just a shame that I haven’t been able to introduce you to the girls! They were all so excited when I told them they’d be sharing the dorm with a boy this year, you know.”

“I can image,” I say, and given how most girls have been acting around me lately I suddenly dread meeting my other dorm-mates, though they couldn't possibly be as bad as Mira was. And that thought of Mira suddenly remind me of something.

“Actually, funny enough," I start, "I've already met one of your girls.”

“Oh, darling, why am I not surprised?" she says with a small sigh. "A social butterfly like you has probably already met half the school already. So tell me, who’s the lucky girl that got a head start?”

...A head start? I am suddenly very uncomfortable with the energy of the room, but I answer her regardless. “Oh, it was Mira.”

“Mira?” she parrots, a look of surprise on her face.

“Yeah, she’s close with one of the new friends I mentioned. Freddie Shawcross, from the hockey team? I'm sure you've heard about her from Mira before.”

Then all the gregarious air that she seemed to exude a moment ago vanishes in a heartbeat. I can't help but notice the way her eyes start to dart around the room, as though she's suddenly unwilling to maintain eye contact with me. “Oh, uh… yes, they're... very fine girls, I'm sure,” she eventually forces out, the color completely drained from her face.

"Ma'am? Are you okay?"

"Listen, Jason, I'm not about to tell you how to live your life, and I'm certainly not the kind of person that heaps unsolicited advice on people," she says, in that tone that one hundred percent tells me she's about to give me some unsolicited advice. "But you're a strapping young man, and an Unaltered one at that. From one Unaltered to another, I strongly suggest you consider carefully what sort of company you should keep."

I'm not sure how to respond to that, and I feel like I'm missing some crucial context, but the implications she's making don't entirely fly over my head.

"Why? What's wrong with Mira?" I ask. I mean, I know what's wrong with her, she's weird and pushy as fuck, but something tells me that's not what the dorm-mother here is getting at.

She once again locks eyes with me, a look on her face that says, "you should know damn well what's wrong with her".

"Jason," she says in a tone like a mother scolding a child, "there are certain ways a young lady should act, and they should show the proper amount of respect to those above them. I simply don't want you wasting your time with a girl who can't understand that."

We stand there awkwardly in silence for a moment, as I really don't know what to say to all that, other than "What the fuck?!" I need to get the hell out of here.

“I… guess I’ll be going now…” I start, making my way around the dorm-mother and towards the door.

“Right, yes,” she says, nodding along. “Have fine day at school, Jason. With your…” 

Her nose scrunches up for just a moment, as though she caught a sudden whiff of something foul. “Your new friends.”

Without a word, I make my way past her and out of the building. As I stand on the stoop leading up to the front door, the crisp morning air beginning to bite my ears, I'm once again seized by the realization that I'm hopelessly out of my element.

But what else is new? At least I get to grab a bagel on the way to school.